What is up with the Pokémon live-action bid?

Which bid will win?

Thinking back on most of our childhoods many of us grew up with Ash and his friends throwing Pokéballs in the long grass to catch themselves a new pokémon. Some of us even played the Gameboy games. Pokémon has traveled far and became one of the most popular franchises with a multitude of games, three anime series and enough movies to keep you busy for a very long long weekend.

Recently it has come to light that they want to go the next step; creating a live-action movie! According to our Internet source, Legendary’s bid to do the movie is leaving popular brands like Warner Bros and Sony in the dust. Who is Legendary that is making a bid for this movie, you may ask. Legendary is partly-owned the Dalian Wanda Group, a Chinese company which recently licensed Godzilla, meaning that they have a nice piece of ‘the live-action movie bidding pie’.

Some of you might think that because there is a lot of political tension between China and Japan there might be a problem, but on a pop-cultural level, there is great admiration between the two countries. China has a LOT of anime and Manga Fanatiks, anime like Mobile Suit Gundam is very popular there, even merchandising like model kits are a hugely profitable business in China.

Maybe to have a fellow Asian country involved with a pokémon live-action movie is a step in the right direction since Hollywood has a bad track record with doing live-action versions of anime. Dragonball Evolution as an example. We all remember the outrage the movie started amongst Dragon Ball fanatiks about how they were not happy with the casting of some of the actors and had issues with the CGI effects in Dragonball Evolution.

We hope that when this Pokémon live-action does happen that it will wow us, that it will bring more fanatiks to anime and not scare people off, we hope for an actor that will embrace the spirit and heart of who Ash is and that it will be a fun movie that Pokémon fanatiks would want to see again and again.